Friday, November 20, 2015

ARUN FERREIRA: A SAGA IN COURAGE by Fr. Cedric Prakash sj

ARUN FERREIRA: A SAGA IN COURAGE

-Fr.
Cedric Prakash sj*

On September 27th 2011 Arun Ferreira was released from the
Nagpur jail after being illegally incarcerated since May 2007 on charges of
being a naxalite. Just as he stepped out
from the gates of the jail even as his aged parents and other family members
waited outside the jail to welcome him back into their loving embrace, Arun was
forcibly arrested once again and that too without a warrant.

The next day, on September 28th
he was produced at the JMFC Court in Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra in a
fabricated case of criminal conspiracy of 2007 despite the fact that the Trial
Court had exonerated him of every single charge the previous day. He continued to languish in jail till January
3rd 2012 when he was granted bail; only on January 29th 2014
was he finally acquitted of all the false cases which were foisted on him by
the State and other vested interests.

Arun Ferreira is a saga in courage. An
alumnus of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, he is basically a human rights
defender, engaging in social and political activism. As a college student, he
organised students to fight for their rights and against social
atrocities. He deeply involved himself
in the ‘right-to-housing’ struggles of Mumbai slum dwellers and later on with
the tribals and other marginalised communities in rural Maharashtra. For his
commitment to the rights of the poor, he was picked up in 2007 and was falsely charged
of being a naxalite. For nearly five years in jail after that - besides being
charged with several crimes like criminal conspiracy, murder, possession of
arms and rioting - he was tortured and suffered greatly from police brutality.

Arun was our guest at ‘PRASHANT’ on
November 16th 2015, the day which is observed by the United Nations
as ‘the International Day of Tolerance’.
We had invited a select group of our collaborators and well-wishers to listen to
his painful and traumatic experience in prison. Without rancour or anger, but
in a way which touched the hearts of all present, he shared with those present
the ordeal of being a prisoner in India today.

His
prison memoir entitled ‘Colours of the
Cage’ contains a fair bit of what he went through in jail. On the cover
page of the book is a note from well-known author and activist Arundhati Roy “Arun Ferreira gives us a clear-eyed,
unsentimental account of custodial torture, years of imprisonment on false
cases and the flagrant violation of procedure that passes as the Rule of Law.
His experience is shared by tens of thousands of our fellow countrymen and
women, most of whom do not have access to lawyers or legal aid. This country
needs many more books like this one”.

During his conversation at ‘PRASHANT’, Arun
highlighted the need and importance for civil society to work for prison
reforms; the condition in the jail, he says, are abominable, inhuman with very
archaic rules which govern them. Secondly, he asserted, that people should come
out to fight draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA),
2004 which is draconian, violative of basic human rights and goes against the
letter and spirit of the Constitution of India; such anti-people laws need to
be abolished.

In the foreword to ‘Colours of the Cage’, Naresh Fernandes writes “Arun Ferreira reminds us that diversity of opinion and debate are
essential for any society to flourish. The worst thing we can do to ourselves
is to imprison our imagination”.

Today, Arun continues his activism as an
advocate focussing on issue of political prisoners, prison reforms and on the state
of Indian democracy. He is truly a prophet for our times: a saga in courage!

20th
November, 2015

*(Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is the Director of PRASHANT, the Ahmedabad-based Jesuit Centre for Human Rights,
Justice and Peace.)